In his quest to try to keep everyone from his lineup fresh, Davey Johnson last night sat Bryce Harper and tonight will sit Jayson Werth. The reasons are twofold: Johnson both wants to give some of his regulars a respite as they approach the stretch run, and he also wants to find ways to give at-bats to bench players who have contributed all season.

Last night, that meant a start in left field for Tyler Moore (who proceeded to hit a moonshot into the left-field stands for his eighth homer). Tonight, that means a start in center field for Roger Bernadina, who will also lead off.

Gio Gonzalez, meanwhile, takes the mound in search of his 18th win of the season. He's currently one of four big leaguers sitting on 17, along with R.A. Dickey (who is in line to win this afternoon), Johnny Cueto and David Price.

We may lose the OBP of Werth in the lead off spot, but Berny has proven that his bat can be just as potent as anyone else in the lineup. Man! What a great feeling knowing that we have bench players that aren't automatic outs like in years past. I freakin' love this team, and this season!GYFNG!

I supported giving all of our starters a game off just a couple of posts ago and it was not well received. I will be looking for Ian and Danny to also get a day in the near future as Lombo needs to stay sharp as well. Werth is healthy and can come off the bench in late innings. This is a complete team with decent if not very good depth (how did Moore work out for you guys yesterday??) Flores has benefited from days off, Bryce responded well off the bench and Davey continues to push all the right buttons. Burnett is now resting and expect Storen to get an actual save situation in the future.Go Nats!! Go Playoffs!! Score First!!

Someone noted this a few days ago, but I just checked out Mark's 2012 Media Predictions post from April 5. Pretty darn funny. So much ridicule of Bill Ladson for picking Desi for the All Star game. And the highest beat writer win prediction was Pete Kertzel with 88.Commenters named jeeves and Ray predicted 91 wins, that's the highest predictions I saw. A guy named Natsochist predicted Harper would come up on May 14 and hit 18 HRs. Jeeves said early May and 18. No one else was that optimistic, except for Dan! who predicted 22. (The highest beat writer prediction was 13.) If you're still out there, you guys should come take some bows! http://www.natsinsider.com/2012/04/2012-media-predictions.html

Taking a cue from Mark's previous thread and a revisit to the April 5 article, I will make a prediction that the Nats will win 3 to 7 more games next year (depending on this year's total) than they will this year as Strasburg gets better, Detwiler matures and the rookie parade become sophomores.

Section 222, there were plenty of predictions made before and after that piece was written.The biggest differences I see is the play of LaRoche, Desmond Werth and Bryce's impact from May to June 15th. It has been those 4 playing well beyond most anyone's conceivable level of play except maybe LaRoche who is trending slightly above career highs.Read the LaRoche comments on the in-game thread as the 1st game in Chicago unfolded plus the Werth comments and the Desi hate filled comments about his High School coach working with him on hitting.It just amazes me how much hatred was thrown at these guys.

Thought of an interesting question for post season… did Davey play his bench in post season in 1986 Mets and 1996-97 O's as he does with Nats in regular season? I can not remember in 1986 if he did, however, in 1997, it seemed that he played his bench very little. I could be wrong, does any one remember?

Gonat — I checked it out, and yeah, some folks were pretty vicious on that windy afternoon in Chicago. Here's one by one Anon that is just funny:I can't believe Laroche is still here. He is awful. Hes already stranded five men with only one out. I am already boooooooored as hell with this team. going to cut grass.If he stopped watching the Nats altogether after six innings of the first game, he's missed quite a ride eh?

I may be alone here…. but I think Nats attendance is outstanding. Being 14 of 28 teams and 1.9 million fans attending is a big deal. Monday night, 1st day of school, Michelle speaking all contributed to only 17,000, which is not bad for a Monday night.

The odd thing about the ST and early season criticism of Desi was that he had signalled his improvement with his late surge last year. Some simply chose to disregard this, in spite of several posters (including me) pointing it out.Harsh juddgments on the other three were wrong, but to some extent justified. Werth did have a lousy year in 2011; LaRoche's recovery from his injury was not a sure thing. In fact both of them are on pace to have career years, something no one can be expected to predict, especially those who tie their opinions to statistics from the past. And as for Harper, seriously, who knew? So let us revel in the achievers and their achievements, forgive those whose glass-half-empty nature caused them to doubt, and move onward and upward toward a glorious finish to this glorious season.

222: Great link. Baseball, with all its stats and our feeble human efforts to impose order on randomness, lends itself to such very specific predictions (e.g., X number of HRs, Y games won, Z strikeouts). But when you read through that thread, you realize how impossible it is to foresee (or even recognize) developments like injuries, hot streaks, getting a new pair of glasses, slumps, putting in some extra work on a particular weakness, rediscovering a particular motion, etc. can be. Which is why, as they say, you play the game.More generally, here's to Gio Gonzalez and company taking the Cubs seriously, focussing on the game at hand, and putting some real (and continuous) pressure on from the opening pitch. GYFNG!P.S. – Just received two new Nats hats that I ordered, but — to be sure — I wouldn't dream of wearing either just yet (you know what I mean, I'm sure).

Interesting tweet from Amanda that Davey saiid it's "conceivable" that CMW could get a start this month against a mainly RH lineup.Translation: if we clinch the division, after we clinch the division, and It helps set up the rotation for the playoffs without depriving Lannan of a start, or one of the regular starters from a chance at a round- number win.

Since Davey can't really give starting pitchers a night off, at least not until we've clinched the best record in the NL, I'm hoping he has a quick hook for Gio tonight. Remember he pitched the first complete game of his life this past Friday; Davey should be ready to pounce the moment he thinks Gio's starting to flag.

Eugene in Oregon said…P.S. – Just received two new Nats hats that I ordered, but — to be sure — I wouldn't dream of wearing either just yet (you know what I mean, I'm sure).Cunegonde and I are still waiting on the red jerseys we ordered from China about 10 days ago.

I don't do predictions, as y'all know, but well said re. those who do, Natsie and Eugene.And I'm with Another Sam on weekday games. Once in a while I can get to a day game during the week, but the night games are a no-go for the most part.

Steady Eddie said…Translation: if we clinch the division, after we clinch the division, and It helps set up the rotation for the playoffs without depriving Lannan of a start, or one of the regular starters from a chance at a round- number win.Interesting Eddie…. along that line, does clinch division include clinching best NL record? Meaning, how much of a priority is it to have the best overall record?

@ MicheleS – correction – she originally ordered the Werth, but switched to Strasburg.@ Section 3 – YELLOW jerseys? I know not what ye speak of. They DO have Gio jerseys in the standard home white, red, and holiday-blue colors, though.Here's a link: http://jerseys.bz/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=502_573Note – it's been about ten days and we're still waiting. I'm sure they'll get here eventually, but overnight FedEx or UPS delivery isn't an option from China. They evidently ship via some outfit called EMS, which, near as I can tell, is some Chinese government shipping service. When last seen, our jerseys were in Shanghai on August 26, with status being "despatch from sorting center." Once it leaves China, I suspect EMS has no idea where it is.

If the object was to give Werth a rest, it would have made more sense to wait for the Sunday game w/ the Marlins, which would give him Saturday night, all of Sunday, the travel time and most of Monday off. I hope they adopt the practice of sending the starters of the series openers ahead a day in advance to be optimally rested.

djinFl,Thanks for the tip about the 2013 schedule beginning to leak. I went to a couple of articles, most of which focus on the inter-league aspect (seems it will be roughly the same number of inter-league games as in recent seasons). I was more interested in whether the 15-15 realignment would lead to revisiting the unbalanced own-league schedules. No mention that I could find (in several articles), so apparently not. Too bad, in my opinion.

>It's also worth noting that the Nats do NOT count as paid attendance Red >Carpet Rewards or other free ticket giveaways. (I've confirmed this with my >Nats rep.) Section 222 -Sorry for the late response on this, but I just saw this from earlier in the day. For what it's worth, there was an online discussion with one of the reporters from Baseball Prospectus earlier this year. He said that he had called MLB and and asked them if bonus tickets like Red Carpet Rewards were counted toward paid attendance and he was told they ARE counted.He said he was told any kind of ticket for which money changed hands, like a two-for-one sale or a bonus program like Red Carpet Rewards, counts toward paid attendance. Purely complimentary tickets that are given away with no charge at all do not count as paid attendance.Obviously, I don't know whether the Nats rep you talked to or the MLB rep the Baseball Prospectus reporter talked to is right. However, there does appear to be a disagreement on this issue.

Papa Harper must be so proud. If he continues at this pace, Bryce will have over 60 HR this year.And by "at this pace" I mean 2 HR per game. It's an election year, so I am conditioned to cherry-picking stats. 😉

So I go upstairs to get my wallet just as Harper's stepping up to the plate; need my credit card to complete purchase of ticket for tomorrow's game.Get back downstairs to see him high-fiving in the dugout.(…smacks head on keyboard…)

MLB.tv all messed up (at least on my computer), but saw most of Mr. Harper's AB. Loved the fact that he didn't go for a pitch out of the zone just to have a chance at a three HR game. That's almost as impressive as the two HRs he already has.